When Left Idle, Screen Goes Blank & Everything Becomes Unresponsive

This is a discussion on When Left Idle, Screen Goes Blank & Everything Becomes Unresponsive within the Windows XP Support forums, part of the Tech Support Forum category. Hi, guys.
I'm new here, and I have a strange problem. I don't know if it's my OS, my video

I'm new here, and I have a strange problem. I don't know if it's my OS, my video card, or whatever. Hopefully, you guys will be able to tell me . . .

When I leave my PC idle for about 30 minutes, the screen goes black and stays that way as if the PC has crashed. I move the mouse about and hit the keys on the keyboard, but nothing works: the screen just stays black. In fact, even the little lights on the keyboard (e.g., the Caps Lock light) don't work. Everything just dies.

Whenever this weird crash thingy happens, I have to reboot my PC, after which everything starts to work again. It happens every time I leave the PC idle. It also happened once when I tried to play a video.

I've had the PC for a few years. It's never done this before. The problem's not being caused by any settings.

My OS is XP Pro, and I'm using Service Pack 3. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Just because I am stubborn, you do realize there are standy/hibernate settings AND a separate screen shut-off setting and that the mouse and keyboard have to be 'told' to bring your comp out of standby, etc, ie, they don't do it by default?

Just because I am stubborn, you do realize there are standy/hibernate settings AND a separate screen shut-off setting and that the mouse and keyboard have to be 'told' to bring your comp out of standby, etc, ie, they don't do it by default?

Hibernate is disabled, and all power settings are set to never shut down.

This problem started just the other day. Before that, I could leave my PC idle all day without experiencing any problems.

Is there anything that I can do to find out what's causing the problem? I tried to look at the computer log thingies, but I didn't understand anything. I saw a few errors and warnings, but I couldn't tell if they were relevant.

I launch Disk Defragmenter and Hit "Defragment". The defragmentation starts. At 1%, it seems to hang. The screen then turns black and the PC becomes completely unresponsive. I can restore functionality only if I reboot.

I'm new here, and I have a strange problem. I don't know if it's my OS, my video card, or whatever. Hopefully, you guys will be able to tell me . . .

When I leave my PC idle for about 30 minutes, the screen goes black and stays that way as if the PC has crashed. I move the mouse about and hit the keys on the keyboard, but nothing works: the screen just stays black. In fact, even the little lights on the keyboard (e.g., the Caps Lock light) don't work. Everything just dies.

Whenever this weird crash thingy happens, I have to reboot my PC, after which everything starts to work again. It happens every time I leave the PC idle. It also happened once when I tried to play a video.

I've had the PC for a few years. It's never done this before. The problem's not being caused by any settings.

Could be a RAM or Video Card issue. I had a similar issue awhile back with random freezing due to a corrupt NVIDIA card. But since you mentioned you have Service Pack 3 you might want to read what I wrote below:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fluoresce

My OS is XP Pro, and I'm using Service Pack 3. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Well Service Pack 3 is basically broken (you have to go through a huge list of "steps" before you even install it if you don't want errors, such as removing some past Windows updates - and I read that it doesn't even work at all on AMD Athlon processors (I tried to install it on two different AMD Athlon computers and it basically crashed my system forcing me to use System Restore. I don't even recommend installing it. Service Pack 2 is stable.

Service Pack 3 only causes problems with HP machines, according to what I just read. Besides, I've had Service Pack 3 running for a long time. The problem started just a few days ago.

You might want to try removing the video card and see if this still happens. If so then that probably means the video card is corrupt. That's what happened with my machine (with mine the screen would never turn black though - it would just freeze constantly and force me to reboot).